Rudolph Steiner

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-Auto-3" >[3]</a>:xvi <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/088010600X" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn" >ISBN 0-88010-600-X</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bWXSwDrPNNAC&pg=PR16" >[15]</a></ref> (25/27 February 1861<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-4" >[4]</a> – 30 March 1925) was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrians" title="Austrians" >Austrian</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher" title="Philosopher" >philosopher</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_reformer" title="Social reformer" class="mw-redirect" >social reformer</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture" title="Architecture" >architect</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esotericism" title="Esotericism" >esotericist</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-5" >[5]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-6" >[6]</a> Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_criticism" title="Literary criticism" >literary critic</a> and published philosophical works including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Freedom" title="The Philosophy of Freedom" >The Philosophy of Freedom</a>. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he founded a spiritual movement, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophy" title="Anthroposophy" >anthroposophy</a>, with roots in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_idealism" title="German idealism" >German idealist philosophy</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy" title="Theosophy" >theosophy</a>; other influences include <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethean_science" title="Goethean science" >Goethean science</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucianism" title="Rosicrucianism" >Rosicrucianism</a>.

In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science" title="Science" >science</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality" title="Spirituality" >spirituality</a>;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-7" >[7]</a> his philosophical work of these years, which he termed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_science" title="Spiritual science" class="mw-redirect" >spiritual science</a>, sought to apply the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-RAMcD-8" >[8]</a>:291 differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurythmy" title="Eurythmy" >eurythmy</a>) and architecture, culminating in the building of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetheanum" title="Goetheanum" >Goetheanum</a>, a cultural centre to house <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkunstwerk" title="Gesamtkunstwerk" >all the arts</a>. In the third phase of his work, beginning after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I" title="World War I" >World War I</a>, Steiner worked to establish various <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#Breadth_of_activity" >practical endeavors</a>, including <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education" title="Waldorf education" >Waldorf education</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_Agriculture" title="Biodynamic Agriculture" class="mw-redirect" >biodynamic agriculture</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophical_medicine" title="Anthroposophical medicine" class="mw-redirect" >anthroposophical medicine</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-CL-9" >[9]</a>

Steiner advocated a form of ethical <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism" title="Individualism" >individualism</a>, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology" title="Epistemology" >epistemology</a> on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_Goethe" title="Johann Wolfgang Goethe" class="mw-redirect" >Johann Wolfgang Goethe</a>'s world view, in which “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-10" >[10]</a> A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#cite_note-11" >[11]</a>